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Obama’s Pastor and the Politics of Patriotic Treason

…ice. This is particularly true among middle-class African Americans in the south side of Chicago. For those who have played by the social rules yet still feel alienated, angered, and victimized by racial disparities within the health, educational, economic, and criminal justice systems, Dr. Wright lets them know that they are not crazy. And while many (like Senator Barack Obama) may reject the political impracticality of his pronouncements, they a…

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Declares Victory: Is it Premature?

…ips, like the religiously conservative Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, repealed their prohibitions against interracial dating. In 1989, the Southern Baptist convention passed a resolution on race in which they vowed to “repent of any past bigotry and pray for those who are still caught in its clutches.” The “debate” over interracial marriage, and the racism that undergirded its ban, did not end – but the conversation changed fr…

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Recovering From Rejection: The Second Coming of Ted Haggard

…the so-called Charismatic and Pentecostal “shift in gravity” from the Deep South westward had much less to do with a random vision to build a church in Colorado Springs than the rapid population boom fueled by cheap land that would lead to a new free market Christianity political power base in the Western United States. In less than a decade, Haggard built one of the most influential megachurches in the nation. Not Everybody Loves a Comeback Story…

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‘Id Mubarak and Many Happy Returns!

…u) with health and peace.” I think in the United States, we take ours from South Asia and just say ‘Id Mubarak, “blessed ‘Id,” with the response, ‘Id Karim, “noble or generous ‘Id.” And everywhere there is food. So much food you can see why such a rigorous fast does not produce the world’s thinnest people: they’d eat it all back during the three-day celebration. And that’s what is should be: three days of celebration. The part that puts the ‘holy’…

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The Conservative Christian Case for Separation of Church and State

…t political candidates, has chosen to endorse Gordon Howie for Governor of South Dakota from the pulpit. Howie has asked for pastoral support and in return has promised to assist those pastors in taking their inevitable IRS trials to the Supreme Court in an effort to end separation of church and state in America. Pastor, I recognize your frustration, and I see how things have come to this. For years America has only shrugged at religion, and recen…

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Yankton Sioux Revive Isnati Coming of Age Ceremony

I was deeply heartened to learn this weekend that in South Dakota women of the Yankton Sioux/Ihanktonw Oyate nation have revived the traditional Isnati coming-of-age ceremony for girls: four days after the onset of a girl’s first menses when adult women of the community nourish, bathe, teach, and rename girls and guide them in rituals of self-reliance like gathering their own medicines, making their own ceremonial foods, and erecting their own lo…

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Even Conservative Pollsters Find Growing Support for Gay Rights

…er groups. Men, blacks, and those living in the traditionally conservative South are less accepting of gays and lesbians; but even there, the numbers are encouraging. Fifty-five percent of men said they strongly or somewhat agree that there’s nothing wrong with same-sex marriage, while 47 percent of blacks said the same thing, and a majority of southern millennials, 56 percent, agreed. In fact, out of all of the subcategories, it’s only in the bla…

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Narco-Violence and the Failure of the Church in Mexico

…72 migrants found on August 24th on a farm in a remote town just 100 miles south of the US border. Dismantling the Liberationist Legacy Liberation Theology, the radical social and theological experiment launched after the Second Vatican Council, offered both a social critique and a utopian vision for the future of Latin America. This project was, for a time, powerful and pervasive enough that it could have mitigated some of the underlying social p…

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White Rockers in Search of Soul Salvation

…the very small class of free black slaveholders in the nineteenth-century South. After his death, Bryan’s nephew, Andrew Marshall, took the pulpit at First African Baptist, and became one of the best known (and most controversial) black ministers of the antebellum era, leading to a major schism of the church body. In the early twentieth century, First African was rather famous for its fights and dissension, but eventually became known as well for…

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Mormonism’s “9/11 Mosque Moment”

…ormon missionaries and when Mormon elders were tarred and feathered in the South. It’s a timely and necessary reminder. Because from the chatter around the Mormon blogosphere, I’m gathering that politically opportunistic anti-Muslim sentiment is simmering in the more conservative sectors of the LDS world.   And whereas one usually hears valiant reports on the Mormon grapevine of LDS humanitarian responses to major natural disasters, I’m getting at…

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